We are the world, dammit!

When I was young, like some of my schoolmates, I too actively supported the United Nations.  I still have a certificate for having participated in the UNO Day activities.

The older I got, the more I was concerned that the UN was not achieving any damn thing.  Yes, a few agencies were doing phenomenal work--the FAO, WHO, UNICEF, for instance.  But, think about the UN and we immediately only think about the Security Council and the General Assembly.  The votes and vetoes, where the permanent members play nothing but cold, calculated, political games.

Hence, unlike the young me, the older me has always been highly critical and cynical about all things UN.  But, I understand that for all of us around the world to work together, we have no choice but to deal with various kinds of chaotic, inefficient, and bureaucratic ways.  And given the larger goal of world peace and humanitarian work, well, it is worth it.

Towards this larger goal, I expect my country to also contribute a lot.  After all, with the wealth and power comes great responsibility.  I would any day spend more money to achieve peace and prosperity through such inefficient institutional structures than by bombing countries back to the stone age!

But, we have a new sheriff in the wild west.  The sheriff's deputy to the UN is a brown-skinned woman whose parents immigrated to this country.  From my old country.  But, she has completely whitewashed herself.  From converting to Christianity to parroting the lines of the white nationalist party, aka the GOP:

“You’re going to see a change in the way we do business,” Ms. Haley said. “Our goal with the administration is to show value at the U.N., and the way we’ll show value is to show our strength, show our voice, have the backs of our allies and make sure our allies have our back as well.”
“For those who don’t have our back,” she added, “we’re taking names; we will make points to respond to that accordingly.”

Think about this: "we’re taking names."  To make such a threat to the members of the UN when presenting her credentials and introducing herself?  Not the language of a diplomat who will want to work towards world peace!

The administration’s antipathy toward the United Nations has been sharpened since a Security Council resolution last month condemning Israeli settlements. Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley have criticized the Obama administration’s decision not to veto the resolution. And several Republican senators have supported legislation threatening to defund the United Nations unless the Security Council reverses the terms of the resolution, which Council diplomats say would be politically unworkable.

The GOP pivots on one main issue on the domestic scene, and one main issue on international affairs.  Within the country, whatever be the internal disagreements on issues, it is all about the egg that has been fertilized by semen. When they lift their eyes from this zygote, it is about the "holy land" of Israel.  The concern about the zygote does not mean worrying about the life of the child that is born--to heck with the living is the typical GOP response.  Similarly, the maniacal focus on Israel is less about the tortured history of the Jewish people, and more about the day of reckoning that the GOP faithful want to prepare for.

So, domestic politics gets reduced to the zygote.  And the UN gets reduced to Israel.  Everything else be damned!  Like the situation in Syria; remember this image?

Oh yeah, I forgot that we took care of that Syrian situation with an indefinite ban!

The unbearable whiteness of being ... an Indian?

If only we understood deep within ourselves that we are all variations of Africans!

But, of course, the world doesn't work that way, and the recent hate email itself is a strong piece of evidence from my own life.  While it is one thing to function in society with whatever personal preferences one might have, making political statements of any sort is an entirely different issue.

It is that kind of an issue, however minor that might be, which has landed South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley in a controversy.

The Associated Press reports that in 2001, Haley listed her race as "white" on her voter registration form. State Democrats accuse her of being a fake-race opportunist in a state that is, according to the US Census poll, about 66% white (and just a tick over 1% Asian).

 Like she didn't have enough on her plate already.  And this in a state where the previous governor took quite a hike!

Of course, the news has already echoed around the world, in India:

The 39-year-old Ms. Haley is also the first Indian-American woman Governor and, after Bobby Jindal from Louisiana, is only the second from the community to occupy this post.

The local Post and Courier newspapers reported that the State Democratic Party, which obtained the public record in this regard, is asking whether her inconsistency on the card made her ineligible to vote under a new law.

State Democratic Party chairman Dick Harpootlian said whether Ms. Haley listed her race as white or not did not really matter to him but the issue was that the Governor had shown a pattern of such actions. “Haley has been appearing on television interviews where she calls herself a minority — when it suits her,” Mr. Harpootlian was quoted as saying. 

 Oh well ...

The Supreme Court made it clear, back in 1932, that a person like Nikki Haley cannot claim to be white:

Courts have classified Indians as white and non-white without any real pattern until the crucial 1923 Supreme Court case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, which created the official stance to classify Indians as non-white."

Back in the days of racial segregation, this change in the classification meant, among other things:

As they became classified as non-whites, Indian Americans were banned by anti-miscegenation laws from marrying white Americans in the states of Arizona, Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia.^[3]

Back in 1933, a Nimrata Nikki Randhawa would not have been able to marry a Michael Haley!

I suppose as much as race and ethnic issues have largely died down, they really haven't gone away.

For the record, whenever I am asked to bubble in my race/ethnicity, I go with whatever pleases me. Sometimes I am a White, sometimes an Asian, sometimes it is simply Other.  I simply don't care about that identity.